Long-term prognostic value of thyroid hormones in left ventricular noncompaction

PURPOSE

Thyroid function is closely related to the prognosis of cardiovascular diseases. This study aimed to explore the predictive value of thyroid hormones for adverse cardiovascular outcomes in left ventricular noncompaction (LVNC).

METHODS

This longitudinal cohort study enrolled 388 consecutive LVNC patients with complete thyroid function profiles and comprehensive cardiovascular assessment. Potential predictors for adverse outcomes were thoroughly evaluated.

RESULTS

Over a median follow-up of 5.22 years, primary outcome (the combination of cardiovascular mortality and heart transplantation) occurred in 98 (25.3%) patients. For secondary outcomes, 75 (19.3%) patients died and 130 (33.5%) patients experienced major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE). Multivariable Cox analysis identified that free triiodothyronine (FT3) was independently associated with both primary (HR 0.455, 95%CI 0.313-0.664) and secondary (HR 0.547, 95%CI 0.349-0.858; HR 0.663, 95%CI 0.475-0.925) outcomes. Restricted cubic spline analysis illustrated that the risk for adverse outcomes increased significantly with the decline of serum FT3. The LVNC cohort was further stratified according to tertiles of FT3 levels. Individuals with lower FT3 levels in the tertile 1 group suffered from severe cardiac dysfunction and remodeling, resulting in higher incidence of mortality and MACE (Log-rank P < 0.001). Subgroup analysis revealed that lower concentration of FT3 was linked to worse prognosis, particularly for patients with left atrial diameter ≥ 40 mm or left ventricular ejection fraction ≤ 35%. Adding FT3 to the pre-existing risk score for MACE in LVNC improved its predictive performance.

CONCLUSION

Through the long-term investigation on a large LVNC cohort, we demonstrated that low FT3 level was an independent predictor for adverse cardiovascular outcomes.

Ichthyosis uteri complicated by endometrial adenocarcinoma with transitional cell differentiation: A case report

RATIONALE

Ichthyosis uteri is a rare pathological condition characterized by the replacement of the endometrial lining by stratified squamous epithelium. Yet its occurrence with endometrial adenocarcinoma is very rare.

PATIENT CONCERNS

A 68-year-old woman has been experiencing sporadic, minor vaginal hemorrhages for a few months. The gynecological evaluation revealed a uterine enlargement and imaging demonstrated an irregular mass within the uterus.

DIAGNOSIS

Endometrial adenocarcinoma with transitional cell differentiation; ichthyosis uteri with dysplasia.

INTERVENTIONS

Radical hysterectomy with pelvic lymphadenectomy was performed followed by postoperative radiotherapy.

OUTCOMES

Postoperative follow-up at 8 months showed a favorable outcome without signs of recurrence and metastasis.

LESSONS

Adequate pathological sampling is crucial to identifying the accompanying lesions of ichthyosis uteri. Finding molecular alterations in various pathological morphologies is important to understand the evolution of disease.

Prognostic implications of CT-defined ground glass opacity in clinical stage I-IIA grade 3 invasive non-mucinous pulmonary adenocarcinoma

AIM

To investigate the prognostic impact of computed tomography (CT)-defined ground glass opacity (GGO) in patients with clinical stage I-IIA grade 3 invasive non-mucinous pulmonary adenocarcinoma (INPA).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The present study retrospectively enrolled 187 patients diagnosed with stage I-IIA grade 3 INPA. Their clinicopathological, radiological, and genetic information was evaluated systematically, and a 5-year follow-up was conducted to monitor disease recurrence and mortality. Patients were stratified based on the presence of a GGO component, and the Cox proportional hazard model was employed to assess the influence of clinicopathological factors and genetic variables on tumour outcomes. Recurrence-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method and compared using the log-rank test.

RESULTS

Significant differences were observed in both OS and RFS based on the presence of a GGO component. The group with GGO exhibited superior OS (p=0.002) and RFS (p=0.029). Multivariate analysis revealed that the presence of a GGO component (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.412, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.177-0.959, p=0.040), clinical T2 stage (HR=2.473, 95% CI: 1.498-4.083, p<0.001), pathological N2 stage (HR=3.049, 95% CI: 1.800-5.167, p<0.001), and mixed high-grade patterns (HR=2.392, 95% CI: 1.418-4.036, p=0.001) were predictors of RFS.

CONCLUSION

The presence of a GGO component is strongly associated with a favourable prognosis in grade 3 INPA.

A study of machine learning models for rapid intraoperative diagnosis of thyroid nodules for clinical practice in China

BACKGROUND

In China, rapid intraoperative diagnosis of frozen sections of thyroid nodules is used to guide surgery. However, the lack of subspecialty pathologists and delayed diagnoses are challenges in clinical treatment. This study aimed to develop novel diagnostic approaches to increase diagnostic effectiveness.

METHODS

Artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques were used to automatically diagnose histopathological slides. AI-based models were trained with annotations and selected as efficientnetV2-b0 from multi-set experiments.

RESULTS

On 191 test slides, the proposed method predicted benign and malignant categories with a sensitivity of 72.65%, specificity of 100.0%, and AUC of 86.32%. For the subtype diagnosis, the best AUC was 99.46% for medullary thyroid cancer with an average of 237.6 s per slide.

CONCLUSIONS

Within our testing dataset, the proposed method accurately diagnosed the thyroid nodules during surgery.

THE EFFECT OF CHILDHOOD SUBJECTIVE SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS ON MENTAL HEALTH: THE MEDIATING ROLES OF PERCEIVED DISCRIMINATION AND STATUS ANXIETY

This study explored the effect of childhood subjective socioeconomic status on mental health and the chain-mediating mechanism of perceived discrimination and status anxiety. A random survey was conducted via an online survey platform with 999 college students in east China. Participants completed the Childhood Subjective Socioeconomic Status Scale, General Health Questionnaire, Status Anxiety Scale, and the Perceived Personal Discrimination Scale. The sample comprised 323 men and 676 women. The mean age was 20.49±2.70 years. Mediation analysis using Model 6 and 5,000 bootstrap samples was employed to explore the mediating role of perceived discrimination and status anxiety in the relationship between childhood subjective socioeconomic status and mental health. Mental health was significantly positively correlated with childhood socioeconomic status, and significantly negatively correlated with perceived discrimination and status anxiety. Perceived discrimination and status anxiety played a partial chain mediating role between childhood socioeconomic status and mental health. The mediation model accounted for 31% of the variance in mental health. Moreover, the results indicated that the significant mediating effect of perceived discrimination between childhood subjective SES and mental health had a value of 0.029 and a 95% confidence interval of [0.019, 0.041]. Furthermore, the significant mediating effect of status anxiety between childhood subjective SES and mental health had a value of 0.010 and a 95% confidence interval of [0.006, 0.014]. The results provide an explanation of how childhood subjective socioeconomic status influences their mental health. Interventions to address perceived discrimination and status anxiety can improve the mental health status of children who experience childhood adversity. The study's findings contribute to understanding mental health in childhood and inform potential interventions to improve the well-being of individuals who have experienced childhood adversity. The limitations of the study were self-report scales and potential biases in the sample population. Addressing these limitations will enhance the credibility of the research and pave the way for future studies.

Whole human-brain mapping of single cortical neurons for profiling morphological diversity and stereotypy

Quantifying neuron morphology and distribution at the whole-brain scale is essential to understand the structure and diversity of cell types. It is exceedingly challenging to reuse recent technologies of single-cell labeling and whole-brain imaging to study human brains. We propose adaptive cell tomography (ACTomography), a low-cost, high-throughput, and high-efficacy tomography approach, based on adaptive targeting of individual cells. We established a platform to inject dyes into cortical neurons in surgical tissues of 18 patients with brain tumors or other conditions and one donated fresh postmortem brain. We collected three-dimensional images of 1746 cortical neurons, of which 852 neurons were reconstructed to quantify local dendritic morphology, and mapped to standard atlases. In our data, human neurons are more diverse across brain regions than by subject age or gender. The strong stereotypy within cohorts of brain regions allows generating a statistical tensor field of neuron morphology to characterize anatomical modularity of a human brain.

Randomized phase II adjuvant trial to compare two treatment durations of icotinib (2 years versus 1 year) for stage II-IIIA EGFR-positive lung adenocarcinoma patients (ICOMPARE study)

BACKGROUND

Despite the prolonged median disease-free survival (DFS) by adjuvant targeted therapy in non-small-cell lung cancer patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations, the relationship between the treatment duration and the survival benefits in patients remains unknown.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

In this multicenter, randomized, open-label, phase II trial, eligible patients aged 18-75 years with EGFR-mutant, stage II-IIIA lung adenocarcinoma and who had not received adjuvant chemotherapy after complete tumor resection were enrolled from eight centers in China. Patients were randomly assigned (1 : 1) to receive either 1-year or 2-year icotinib (125 mg thrice daily). The primary endpoint was DFS assessed by investigator. The secondary endpoints were overall survival (OS) and safety. This study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT01929200).

RESULTS

Between September 2013 and October 2018, 109 patients were enrolled (1-year group, n = 55; 2-year group, n = 54). Median DFS was 48.9 months [95% confidence interval (CI) 33.1-70.1 months] in the 2-year group and 32.9 months (95% CI 26.6-44.8 months) in the 1-year group [hazard ratio (HR) 0.51; 95% CI 0.28-0.94; P = 0.0290]. Median OS for patients was 75.8 months [95% CI 64.4 months-not evaluable (NE)] in the 2-year group and NE (95% CI 66.3 months-NE) in the 1-year group (HR 0.34; 95% CI 0.13-0.95; P = 0.0317). Treatment-related adverse events (TRAEs) were observed in 41 of 55 (75%) patients in the 1-year group and in 36 of 54 (67%) patients in the 2-year group. Grade 3-4 TRAEs occurred in 4 of 55 (7%) patients in the 1-year group and in 3 of 54 (6%) patients in the 2-year group. No treatment-related deaths or interstitial lung disease was reported.

CONCLUSIONS

Two-year adjuvant icotinib was shown to significantly improve DFS and provide an OS benefit in EGFR-mutant, stage II-IIIA lung adenocarcinoma patients compared with 1-year treatment in this exploratory phase II study.

Measurement of Direct-Photon Cross Section and Double-Helicity Asymmetry at sqrt[s]=510 GeV in p[over →]+p[over →] Collisions

We present measurements of the cross section and double-helicity asymmetry A_{LL} of direct-photon production in p[over →]+p[over →] collisions at sqrt[s]=510  GeV. The measurements have been performed at midrapidity (|η|<0.25) with the PHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. At relativistic energies, direct photons are dominantly produced from the initial quark-gluon hard scattering and do not interact via the strong force at leading order. Therefore, at sqrt[s]=510  GeV, where leading-order-effects dominate, these measurements provide clean and direct access to the gluon helicity in the polarized proton in the gluon-momentum-fraction range 0.02<x<0.08, with direct sensitivity to the sign of the gluon contribution.

SNAP: a structure-based neuron morphology reconstruction automatic pruning pipeline

Background

Neuron morphology analysis is an essential component of neuron cell-type definition. Morphology reconstruction represents a bottleneck in high-throughput morphology analysis workflow, and erroneous extra reconstruction owing to noise and entanglements in dense neuron regions restricts the usability of automated reconstruction results. We propose SNAP, a structure-based neuron morphology reconstruction pruning pipeline, to improve the usability of results by reducing erroneous extra reconstruction and splitting entangled neurons.

Methods

For the four different types of erroneous extra segments in reconstruction (caused by noise in the background, entanglement with dendrites of close-by neurons, entanglement with axons of other neurons, and entanglement within the same neuron), SNAP incorporates specific statistical structure information into rules for erroneous extra segment detection and achieves pruning and multiple dendrite splitting.

Results

Experimental results show that this pipeline accomplishes pruning with satisfactory precision and recall. It also demonstrates good multiple neuron-splitting performance. As an effective tool for post-processing reconstruction, SNAP can facilitate neuron morphology analysis.

High-throughput confocal airy beam oblique light-sheet tomography of brain-wide imaging at single-cell resolution

Brain research is an area of research characterized by its cutting-edge nature, with brain mapping constituting a crucial aspect of this field. As sequencing tools have played a crucial role in gene sequencing, brain mapping largely depends on automated, high-throughput and high-resolution imaging techniques. Over the years, the demand for high-throughput imaging has scaled exponentially with the rapid development of microscopic brain mapping. In this paper, we introduce the novel concept of confocal Airy beam into oblique light-sheet tomography named CAB-OLST. We demonstrate that this technique enables the high throughput of brain-wide imaging of long-distance axon projection for the entire mouse brain at a resolution of 0.26 μm × 0.26 μm × 1.06 μm in 58 hours. This technique represents an innovative contribution to the field of brain research by setting a new standard for high-throughput imaging techniques.

Deep Learning-Based Recognition of Cervical Squamous Interepithelial Lesions

Cervical squamous intraepithelial lesions (SILs) are precursor lesions of cervical cancer, and their accurate diagnosis enables patients to be treated before malignancy manifests. However, the identification of SILs is usually laborious and has low diagnostic consistency due to the high similarity of pathological SIL images. Although artificial intelligence (AI), especially deep learning algorithms, has drawn a lot of attention for its good performance in cervical cytology tasks, the use of AI for cervical histology is still in its early stages. The feature extraction, representation capabilities, and use of p16 immunohistochemistry (IHC) among existing models are inadequate. Therefore, in this study, we first designed a squamous epithelium segmentation algorithm and assigned the corresponding labels. Second, p16-positive area of IHC slides were extracted with Whole Image Net (WI-Net), followed by mapping the p16-positive area back to the H&E slides and generating a p16-positive mask for training. Finally, the p16-positive areas were inputted into Swin-B and ResNet-50 to classify the SILs. The dataset comprised 6171 patches from 111 patients; patches from 80% of the 90 patients were used for the training set. The accuracy of the Swin-B method for high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (HSIL) that we propose was 0.914 [0.889-0.928]. The ResNet-50 model for HSIL achieved an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.935 [0.921-0.946] at the patch level, and the accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity were 0.845, 0.922, and 0.829, respectively. Therefore, our model can accurately identify HSIL, assisting the pathologist in solving actual diagnostic issues and even directing the follow-up treatment of patients.

[Association between urinary arsenic level and serum testosterone in Chinese men aged 18 to 79 years]

Objective: To investigate the association between the urinary arsenic level and serum total testosterone in Chinese men aged 18 to 79 years. Methods: A total of 5 048 male participants aged 18 to 79 years were recruited from the China National Human Biomonitoring (CNHBM) from 2017 to 2018. Questionnaires and physical examinations were used to collect information on demographic characteristics, lifestyle, food intake frequency and health status. Venous blood and urine samples were collected to detect the level of serum total testosterone, urine arsenic and urine creatinine. Participants were divided into three groups (low, middle, and high) based on the tertiles of creatinine-adjusted urine arsenic concentration. Weighted multiple linear regression was fitted to analyze the association of urinary arsenic with serum total testosterone. Results: The weighted average age of 5 048 Chinese men was (46.72±0.40) years. Geometric mean concentration (95%CI) of urinary arsenic, creatinine-adjusted urine arsenic and serum testosterone was 22.46 (20.08, 25.12) μg/L, 19.36 (16.92, 22.15) μg/L and 18.13 (17.42, 18.85) nmol/L, respectively. After controlling for covariates, compared with the low-level urinary arsenic group, the testosterone level of the participants in the middle-level group and the high-level group decreased gradually. The percentile ratio (95%CI) was -5.17% (-13.14%, 3.54%) and -10.33% (-15.68%, -4.63). The subgroup analysis showed that the association between the urinary arsenic level and testosterone level was more obvious in the group with BMI<24 kg/m² group (P_interaction<0.05). Conclusion: There is a negative association between the urinary arsenic level and serum total testosterone in Chinese men aged 18-79 years.

[The characteristics and correlations of vaginal flora in women with cervical lesions]

Objective: To explore the characteristics and correlations of vaginal flora in women with cervical lesions. Methods: A total of 132 women, including 41 women diagnosed with normal cervical (NC), 39 patients with low-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN 1), 37 patients with high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN 2/3) and 15 patients with cervical squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), who came from the gynecological clinic of Second Hospital of Shanxi Medical University during January 2018 to June 2018, were enrolled in this study according to the inclusive and exclusive criteria strictly. The vaginal flora was detected by 16S rDNA sequencing technology. Co-occurrence network analysis was used to investigate the Spearman correlations between different genera of bacteria. Results: The dominant bacteria in NC, CIN 1 and CIN 2/3 groups were Lactobacillus [constituent ratios 79.4% (1 869 598/2 354 098), 63.6% (1 536 466/2 415 100) and 58.3% (1 342 896/2 301 536), respectively], while Peptophilus [20.4% (246 072/1 205 154) ] was the dominant bacteria in SCC group. With the aggravation of cervical lesions, the diversity of vaginal flora gradually increased (Shannon index: F=6.39, P=0.001; Simpson index: F=3.95, P=0.012). During the cervical lesion progress, the ratio of Lactobacillus gradually decreased, the ratio of other anaerobes such as Peptophilus, Sneathia, Prevotella and etc. gradually increased, and the differential bacteria (LDA score >3.5) gradually evolved from Lactobacillus to other anaerobes. The top 10 relative abundance bacteria, spearman correlation coefficient>0.4 and P<0.05 were selected. Co-occurrence network analysis showed that Prevotella, Peptophilus, Porphyrinomonas, Anaerococcus, Sneathia, Atopobium, Gardnerella and Streptococcus were positively correlated in different stages of cervical lesions, while Lactobacillus was negatively correlated with the above anaerobes. It was found that the relationship between vaginal floras in CIN 1 group was the most complex and only Peptophilus was significantly negatively correlated with Lactobacillus in SCC group. Conclusions: The increased diversity and changed correlations between vaginal floras are closely related to cervical lesions. Peptophilus is of great significance in the diagnosis, prediction and early warning of cervical carcinogenesis.

Lipolysis is accompanied by immune microenvironment remodeling in adipose tissue of obesity with different exercise intensity

OBJECTIVE

Obesity and overweight are risk factors for chronic disease worldwide. The purpose of this study was to compare the transcriptome of exercise-induced fat mobilization in obese people, and to explore the effect of different exercise intensity on the correlation of immune microenvironment remodeling and lipolysis in adipose tissue.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Microarray datasets of adipose tissue before and after exercise were downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus. Then, we used gene-enrichment analysis and PPI-network construction to elucidate the function and enrichment pathways of the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and to identify the central genes. A network of protein-protein interactions was obtained using STRING and visualized with Cytoscape.

RESULTS

A total of 929 DEGs were identified between 40 pre-exercise (BX) samples and 65 post-exercise (AX) samples from GSE58559, GSE116801, and GSE43471. Among these DEGs, adipose tissue-expressed genes were duly recognized. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analyses indicated that DEGs were mostly enriched in lipid metabolism. Studies have found that mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway and forkhead box O (FOXO) signaling pathway are up-regulated, while Ribosome, coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and IGF-1 gene are down-regulated. Although we found the up-regulated genes that noted IL-1 among others, and the down-regulated gene was IL-34. The increase of inflammatory factors leads to changes in cellular immune microenvironment, and high-intensity exercise leads to increased expression of inflammatory factors in adipose tissue, leading to inflammatory responses.

CONCLUSIONS

Exercise at different intensities leads to the degradation of adipose and is accompanied by changes in the immune microenvironment within adipose tissue. High intensity exercise can cause the imbalance of immune microenvironment of adipose tissue while causing fat degradation. Therefore, moderate intensity and below exercise is the best way for the general population to reduce fat and weight.

STING agonism overcomes STAT3-mediated immunosuppression and adaptive resistance to PARP inhibition in ovarian cancer

BACKGROUND

Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibition (PARPi) has demonstrated potent therapeutic efficacy in patients with BRCA-mutant ovarian cancer. However, acquired resistance to PARPi remains a major challenge in the clinic.

METHODS

PARPi-resistant ovarian cancer mouse models were generated by long-term treatment of olaparib in syngeneic Brca1-deficient ovarian tumors. Signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3)-mediated immunosuppression was investigated in vitro by co-culture experiments and in vivo by analysis of immune cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME) of human and mouse PARPi-resistant tumors. Whole genome transcriptome analysis was performed to assess the antitumor immunomodulatory effect of STING (stimulator of interferon genes) agonists on myeloid cells in the TME of PARPi-resistant ovarian tumors. A STING agonist was used to overcome STAT3-mediated immunosuppression and acquired PARPi resistance in syngeneic and patient-derived xenografts models of ovarian cancer.

RESULTS

In this study, we uncover an adaptive resistance mechanism to PARP inhibition mediated by tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) in the TME. Markedly increased populations of protumor macrophages are found in BRCA-deficient ovarian tumors that rendered resistance to PARPi in both murine models and patients. Mechanistically, PARP inhibition elevates the STAT3 signaling pathway in tumor cells, which in turn promotes protumor polarization of TAMs. STAT3 ablation in tumor cells mitigates polarization of protumor macrophages and increases tumor-infiltrating T cells on PARP inhibition. These findings are corroborated in patient-derived, PARPi-resistant BRCA1-mutant ovarian tumors. Importantly, STING agonists reshape the immunosuppressive TME by reprogramming myeloid cells and overcome the TME-dependent adaptive resistance to PARPi in ovarian cancer. This effect is further enhanced by addition of the programmed cell death protein-1 blockade.

CONCLUSIONS

We elucidate an adaptive immunosuppression mechanism rendering resistance to PARPi in BRCA1-mutant ovarian tumors. This is mediated by enrichment of protumor TAMs propelled by PARPi-induced STAT3 activation in tumor cells. We also provide a new strategy to reshape the immunosuppressive TME with STING agonists and overcome PARPi resistance in ovarian cancer.

Associations of Body-Roundness Index and Sarcopenia with Cardiovascular Disease among Middle-Aged and Older Adults: Findings from CHARLS

OBJECTIVES

Sarcopenia and obesity may contribute to chronic disease. However, little is known about the association between sarcopenia, body roundness index (BRI), and cardiovascular disease (CVD). The aim of this study was to investigate the association of sarcopenia and BRI with CVD in middle-aged and older Chinese population.

DESIGN

Cohort study with an 8-year follow-up.

SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS

Data were derived from 4 waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, and 6152 participants aged 45 or above were included in the study.

METHODS

Sarcopenia was defined according to the Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia 2019 criteria. CVD was defined as the presence of physician-diagnosed heart disease, diabetes and/or stroke. The associations of BRI and sarcopenia with CVD risk were explored using Cox proportional hazards regression models.

RESULTS

The mean age of the participants was 58.3 (8.9) years, and 2936 (47.7%) were males. During the 8 years follow-up, 2385 cases (38.8%) with incident CVD were identified. Longitudinal results demonstrated that compared to neither sarcopenia or high BRI, both sarcopenia and high BRI (HR: 1.49, 95%CI: 1.08, 2.07) were associated with higher risk of CVD. In the subgroup analysis, individuals with both sarcopenia and high BRI were more likely to have new onset stroke (HR: 1.93, 95%CI: 1.12, 3.32) and increased risk of multimorbidity (HR: 2.15, 95% CI: 1.14, 4.04).

CONCLUSIONS

Coexistence of sarcopenia and high BRI was associated with higher risk of CVD. Early identification and intervention for sarcopenia and BRI not only allows the implementation of therapeutic strategies, but also provides an opportunity to mitigate the risk of developing CVD.

Associations of Pain and Sarcopenia with Successful Aging among Older People in China: Evidence from CHARLS

OBJECTIVES

Sarcopenia and chronic pain are geriatric syndromes that negatively impact the lives of older people. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship among sarcopenia, pain, and successful aging among older persons participating in the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS).

DESIGN

Cohort study with a 2-year follow-up.

SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS

Data were derived from 2 waves of the CHARLS, and 4280 community-dwelling participants aged ≥ 60 years were included in the study.

METHODS

Sarcopenia status was defined according to the Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia 2019 (AWGS 2019) criteria. Successful aging was defined following Rowe and Kahn's multidimensional model. Pain was assessed by a self-reported questionnaire. A generalized estimating equation (GEE) was used to examine the associations.

RESULTS

Longitudinal results demonstrated that compared with no sarcopenia, possible sarcopenia [OR (95%CI): 0.600 (0.304~1.188)] was not significantly associated with successful aging. Pain only was strongly associated with successful aging [0.388 (0.251~0.600)], whereas the association between sarcopenia only and successful aging was weaker [0.509 (0.287~0.905)]. The likelihood of being successful aging was substantially lower in the presence of coexisting sarcopenia and pain [0.268 (0.108~0.759)].

CONCLUSIONS

Both pain and sarcopenia are significant predictors for achieving successful aging among community-dwelling older adults. Early identification of sarcopenia and pain permits the implementation of treatment strategies and presents an opportunity to mitigate the risk of being unsuccessful aging.

NRRS: a re-tracing strategy to refine neuron reconstruction

It is crucial to develop accurate and reliable algorithms for fine reconstruction of neural morphology from whole-brain image datasets. Even though the involvement of human experts in the reconstruction process can help to ensure the quality and accuracy of the reconstructions, automated refinement algorithms are necessary to handle substantial deviations problems of reconstructed branches and bifurcation points from the large-scale and high-dimensional nature of the image data. Our proposed Neuron Reconstruction Refinement Strategy (NRRS) is a novel approach to address the problem of deviation errors in neuron morphology reconstruction. Our method partitions the reconstruction into fixed-size segments and resolves the deviation problems by re-tracing in two steps. We also validate the performance of our method using a synthetic dataset. Our results show that NRRS outperforms existing solutions and can handle most deviation errors. We apply our method to SEU-ALLEN/BICCN dataset containing 1741 complete neuron reconstructions and achieve remarkable improvements in the accuracy of the neuron skeleton representation, the task of radius estimation and axonal bouton detection. Our findings demonstrate the critical role of NRRS in refining neuron morphology reconstruction.

Availability and implementation

The proposed refinement method is implemented as a Vaa3D plugin and the source code are available under the repository of vaa3d_tools/hackathon/Levy/refinement. The original fMOST images of mouse brains can be found at the BICCN's Brain Image Library (BIL) (https://www.brainimagelibrary.org). The synthetic dataset is hosted on GitHub (https://github.com/Vaa3D/vaa3d_tools/tree/master/hackathon/Levy/refinement).

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics Advances online.

Tracing weak neuron fibers

MOTIVATION

Precise reconstruction of neuronal arbors is important for circuitry mapping. Many auto-tracing algorithms have been developed toward full reconstruction. However, it is still challenging to trace the weak signals of neurite fibers that often correspond to axons.

RESULTS

We proposed a method, named the NeuMiner, for tracing weak fibers by combining two strategies: an online sample mining strategy and a modified gamma transformation. NeuMiner improved the recall of weak signals (voxel values <20) by a large margin, from 5.1 to 27.8%. This is prominent for axons, which increased by 6.4 times, compared to 2.0 times for dendrites. Both strategies were shown to be beneficial for weak fiber recognition, and they reduced the average axonal spatial distances to gold standards by 46 and 13%, respectively. The improvement was observed on two prevalent automatic tracing algorithms and can be applied to any other tracers and image types.

AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION

Source codes of NeuMiner are freely available on GitHub (https://github.com/crazylyf/neuronet/tree/semantic_fnm). Image visualization, preprocessing and tracing are conducted on the Vaa3D platform, which is accessible at the Vaa3D GitHub repository (https://github.com/Vaa3D). All training and testing images are cropped from high-resolution fMOST mouse brains downloaded from the Brain Image Library (https://www.brainimagelibrary.org/), and the corresponding gold standards are available at https://doi.brainimagelibrary.org/doi/10.35077/g.25.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

[The correlation between methylation in HPV16 long control region and cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2 or more: a Meta-analysis]

Objective: To investigate the correlation between methylation in human papillomavirus 16 (HPV16) long control region (LCR) and cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade ≥2 (CIN2+). Methods: The literature retrieval was conducted by using the databases of PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, CNKI, Wanfang data and Weipu according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and the retrieval period was from the establishment of the databases to February 27^th, 2022. Software RevMan 5.3 and Stata 15.1 were used for Meta-analysis. Results: A total of 17 literatures were included involving 1 421 subjects. Results of Meta-analysis showed that OR of the correlation between methylation of HPV16 LCR and CIN2+ was 1.56 (95%CI: 0.70-3.47). Subgroup analysis showed that methylation of the 5' terminal, enhancer and promoter regions were not associated with CIN2+, while in four E2 binding sites (E2BS), the methylation of E2BS1, E2BS3 and E2BS4 increased the risk of CIN2+, with the ORs of 3.92 (95%CI: 1.92-7.99), 10.50 (95%CI: 3.67-30.04) and 3.65 (95%CI: 1.58-8.41), respectively. However, subgroup analysis on E2BS2 was not performed due to the limitation of the number of literatures. According to the different sources of population, the risk of CIN2+ in Chinese population was associated with methylation of HPV16 LCR (OR=2.14, 95%CI: 1.31-3.50). There was a correlation between the risk of CIN2+ and HPV16 LCR methylation in the population with pyrosequencing of HPV16 LCR, and OR was 1.75 (95%CI: 1.03-2.98). Conclusion: The risk of CIN2+ is correlated with the methylation of E2BS in HPV16 LCR, which can be used as potential biomarkers.

Effect of arginine supplementation on the production of milk fat in dairy cows

Arginine, one of the conditionally essential AA, has been reported to affect fat synthesis and metabolism in nonruminant animals by influencing adenosine monophosphate activated protein kinase (AMPK) in some organs. In dairy cows, the effect of Arg on milk fat production is not clear, and any potential mechanism that underlies the effect is unknown. We tested the hypothesis that Arg infusion would improve the production of milk fat, and explored possible mechanism that might underlie any effect. We used 6 healthy lactating cows at 20 ± 2 d in milk, in fourth parity, with a body weight of 508 ± 14 kg, body condition score of 3.0 ± 0, and a milk yield of 30.6 ± 1.8 kg/d (mean ± standard deviation). The cows were blocked by days in milk and milk yield and each cow received 3 treatments in a replicated 3 × 3 Latin square design, with each of the experimental periods lasting 7 d with a 14-d washout between each period. The treatments, delivered in random order, were (1) infusion of saline (control); (2) infusion of 0.216 mol/d of l-Arg in saline (Arg); (3) infusion of 0.868 mol/d of l-Ala in saline (the Arg and Ala treatments were iso-nitrogenous) through a jugular vein. On the last day of each experimental period, blood was sampled to measure insulin, nitric oxide, glucose, and nonesterified fatty acid, and the liver and mammary gland were biopsied to measure the expression of genes. Milk yield was recorded, and milk fat percentage was measured daily during each of the experimental periods. The yield and composition of fatty acid (FA) in milk was measured daily on the last 3 d during each of the experimental periods. The data were analyzed using a mixed model with treatment as a fixed factor, and cow, period, and block as random factors. The daily milk yield and milk fat yield when the cows were infused with Arg were 2.2 kg and 76 g, respectively, higher than that in control, and 1.8 kg and 111 g, respectively, higher than that in Ala. When the cows were infused with Arg they had higher concentration and yield of de novo synthesized FA, than when they received the control or Ala infusions, although milk fat percentage, daily feed intake, and the digestibility of nutrients were not affected by treatment. The serum concentration of nitric oxide and insulin were higher during Arg than during control or Ala, with no difference between control and Ala. In the liver, the expression of the genes coding for AMPK (PRKAA1, PRKAB1, and PRKAG1) and genes related to the oxidation of FA were higher during Arg than during control or Ala, whereas in the mammary gland the expression PRKAB1 was lowest, and the expression of genes involved in the synthesis of milk fat were highest, during Arg infusion. The results suggest the intravenous infusion of Arg enhanced the production of milk fat by promoting the de novo synthesis of FA and increasing milk yield.

Irregular screening participation increases advanced stage breast cancer at diagnosis: A population-based study

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the effect of irregular screening behaviour on the risk of advanced stage breast cancer at diagnosis in Flanders.

METHODS

All women aged 50-69 who were invited to the organized breast cancer screening and diagnosed with breast cancer before age 72 from 2001 to 2018 were included. All prevalent screen and interval cancers within 2 years of a prevalent screen were excluded. Screening behaviour was categorized based on the number of invitations and performed screenings. Four groups were defined: regular, irregular, only-once, and never attenders. Advanced stage cancer was defined as a stage III + breast cancer. The association between screening regularity and breast cancer stage at diagnosis was evaluated in multivariable logistic regression models, taking age of diagnosis and socio-economic status into account.

RESULTS

In total 13.5% of the 38,005 breast cancer cases were diagnosed at the advanced stage. Compared to the regular attenders, the risk of advanced stage breast cancer for the irregular attenders, women who participated only-once, and never attenders was significantly higher with OR_adjusted:1.17 (95%CI:1.06-1.29) and OR_adjusted:2.18 (95%CI:1.94-2.45), and OR_adjusted:5.95 (95%CI:5.33-6.65), respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

In our study, never attenders were nearly six times more likely to be diagnosed with advanced stage breast cancer than regular attenders, which was much higher than the estimates published thus far. An explanation for this is that the ever screened women is a heterogeneous group regarding the participation profiles which also includes irregular and only-once attenders. The benefit of regular screening should be informed to all women invited for screening.